Are you one of the new volunteers and you want to know what your tasks will be during the Youth Exchange? This post is perfect for you! Last week in Awesome People’s house we hosted the second Youth Exchange since we arrived.
The Youth Exchange was about learning how to create a project, using the Portable Youth Hub portal. The participants were 15 youngsters between 13 and 15 years from 3 different countries (Sweden, Slovenia and Romania) that stayed in the Awesome People house for 8 days.
Before the Youth Exchange started, the volunteers stayed in the Awesome House and prepared everything (cleaning, preparing the beds, preparing the living room and transforming it into a workshop/session space, cooking… and taking care of many other details).
During the 8 days of the Youth Exchange, we, the volunteers, had different tasks ,divided between us. This time, every volunteer had 2 of the following roles (1 for the first half of the project and 1 for the second half):
Cleaning (cleaning the house, taking care of the trash…).
Cooking (preparing the food, preparing fikas, cleaning the kitchen after cooking, after fikas, lunch, dinner…).
Social media (creating content for social media, especially for Instagram).
Video (creating material for the creation of the video of the Youth Exchange).
Breakfast preparation.
Facilitation (this is a new role for this Youth Exchange that I hope that it will continue for the following Youth Exchanges and Training Courses because it’s the role that I enjoyed the most!). The role consists of giving support to the Youth Leader, helping to facilitate the different sessions of the Youth Exchange.
During the Youth Exchange you will be able to meet people from different countries, and get to know some traditions from those countries! (each country has a “cultural night”, where the participants from that country need to prepare a typical dinner and then show some traditions/dances/games…). You will also have a chance to discover more about Sweden and its culture, for example, you will be able to try the Swedish fika everyday!
During the day you will be very busy with your tasks, but you will also have some free time to get to know the participants, especially during the night (playing board games, cultural nights, chatting, very interesting conversations about the different traditions, languages, countries that you come from…).
You will share the room with other people and the house will be full, so sometimes it will be a little bit hard to rest and sleep well, but you will also get “compensation days” for the extra days worked during the project, that you can use as you like (you can rest, travel…).
At the end of the project, the final task will be to clean and leave the Awesome house as awesome as it was before the Youth Exchange!
I hope that I helped you to understand what your tasks will be during the Youth Exchanges as a future volunteer! A Youth Exchange is an intense experience since a lot of things happen in a short period of time, I’m sure that you will enjoy the experience and find a way to make the most out of it!